


Parameters and Arguments

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Category: London Spy
Genre: Arguments, Established Relationship, Fluff, Implication of cheating, M/M, Making Out, Making Up, domestic life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-31 12:18:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6469810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>But it occurs to him then that Danny might like to know.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>So he tells him.</i>
</p><p>Alex and Danny have a talk. Based on the implied and speculated idea in canon that Alex slept with someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It occurs to Alex one day, as he’s working, that Danny might like to know. The idea comes to him from a targeted advertisement in his sidebar, a random conglomeration of words directed to catch his attention. He reads it several times over.  
 _  
Is Your Partner Cheating? Find Out Now._

Of course Danny isn’t, or if he is then he’s very clever about it since they spend nearly every hour of the day together. Of course Alex isn’t, because he knows he’s not. It’s an easy algorithm to write, monitoring key phrases searched and trying to attract one’s eye to a call-to-action. Alex spends a little while tracing back over what he might have searched that lead faraway machines to think he’d be interested in background checks, and decides it must have come from something long ago, a late-night and addled question asked to the oracle of a search engine.  
 _  
is it cheating if they tell you to do it_

A moment of weakness that now shows its marks on his browser. He never did find an answer that satisfied him, nor that soothed his frenzied heart. Time’s passage and the sudden shock of being targeted by his own took care of that.

But it occurs to him then that Danny might like to know.

So he tells him.

Initially, there is no response. Danny turns a page in his book before his brows furrow and his lips part and the words penetrate. Even then, his only response is a hum, questioning. So Alex, as anyone asked to repeat when one did not initially hear, tells him again.

“I did share intimacy with someone else.”

Again, the reaction is slow to come, almost lazy if not for the fact that Danny is merely processing the words, now, not just hearing them. He blinks and closes his book on his fingers to keep his page.

“Back in college?” He asks.

Alex shakes his head. “In London.”

The answer isn’t a negation of Danny’s question, but the movement is. Yet Alex stands before him, open and guileless, dressed in a cozy cardigan and soft cotton trousers. He stands before him not as someone sorry for what he’s done, but as honest as he always is with Danny, about everything.

It makes him bloody hard to read, and Danny draws a breath as he sits up, folding his legs. “You’ll have to give me more than that. I don’t understand.”

Alex ducks his head, lips thinned in thought. He draws a breath and holds it a beat, speaking softly. “There was a man, an artist, who waited tables at the restaurant where we shared breakfast. He told me about his art, and asked if I’d like to see it. I said yes -”

“Alex,” Danny interjects. “When?”

“Two and a half months before we came here,” Alex shrugs. “Six months after we met.”

Danny blinks at him, and when he sets it book down it is with a very quiet snap to the bedside table.

“Two and a half months before we came here?” He asks again. Alex nods, confirms it with a quiet word. “When we were still together?”

“We had an argument,” Alex tells him. “We disagreed on -”

“Alex,” Danny’s tone is hard, crisp. His brows furrow deeper and he licks his lips. “Did you sleep with someone when we were still together?”

This isn’t how Alex imagined he would react. To be entirely honest, he’d given little thought to it at all. Alex feels little guilt for it, and what part still remains as a gentle tug inside his chest, he hoped to alleviate by telling Danny about it now. For a moment, Alex is simply silent, seeking between Danny’s eyes and looking across the crease in his brow. Danny is upset, or on the verge of being so, and Alex draws a breath but doesn’t know the right words to use to calm him again.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” Alex begins, quieting when Danny lifts a hand. He doesn’t make Danny repeat the question. “Yes,” he says instead, with a shrug and a soft smile. “Once.”

“Once,” Danny repeats, his laugh tight and painful, not the beautiful bright thing Alex is so used to hearing. “Is more than fucking enough, Alex.” He turns to him, hands spreading in semblance of a shrug. “How did you possibly think this wouldn’t upset me?”

Alex feels his own brows draw, now, in confusion. “Because I told you the truth,” he says. “It happened over a year ago. We’ve been together so long, now...”

“And we were together then,” Danny reminds him, voice rising in volume. “We were together then, too, Alex. What did - why did you do it?”

His breath doesn’t fill his lungs when he takes it, his chest too tight suddenly, his ribs too small. Alex lowers his eyes to a neutral spot on the bed cover, cream-colored and smooth but for the single wrinkle in his narrowed field of vision on which he focuses. “You told me I should,” Alex says.

“And you told me you didn’t want anyone else,” Danny says. “You didn’t need anyone else.”

“I didn’t,” Alex says with a shrug, one shoulder rising and falling. “I don’t. But when the opportunity presented itself, I thought about what you said. I didn’t think you’d be angry.”

“You didn’t think - you were my life, Alex!” Danny tells him, sitting forward on the bed, pushing deliberately into Alex’s line of sight. “You are my life!”

“You’ve slept with other people before me.”

“But never when I was with you,” Danny reminds him. “Never, once, when I was with you. Not even after that argument, not even after the bloody campfire, Alex, I never once slept with another.”

He draws his hand over his face with a groan and settles, pressing both hands to his eyes to watch stars spark behind them. He says nothing more for a long time, as he tries to steady his breathing.

“Did you like it?” Danny asks at length.

Alex swallows hard, and shrugs again. “Of course -”

“Oh, God,” Danny laughs, dire.

“Of course I did,” Alex says, a little louder now, trying to contend with the rising gale of Danny’s anger. He’s shouting into a storm that is far louder, larger, and fiercer than himself, as if he might quiet it back to peaceful warmth. “It felt good, it felt physically satisfying. Should I not have enjoyed it?” Alex asks, bewildered. “Stimulation is just that, but if one finds pleasure in an act of stimulation, then that act will create pleasure. It’s a tautology, A is equal to A -”

“Don’t start with your bullshit equations, Alex,” Danny tells him, sitting straighter in the bed before shoving himself to the edge and finally standing up. He holds out his hand when Alex tries to reach for him, and Alex drops his arm again. “The fact of the matter is that you slept with someone else. With another man. And you enjoyed it.”

“Yes,” Alex confirms, the confusion clear in his quiet tone, in the tense frown he wears on his perfect lips.

“Goddammit, Alex, that’s not what people do. That’s not what people who love each other do.”

“I do love you,” Alex says, shaking his head as Danny smears a laugh beneath his fingers.

“And yet you fucked someone else. What am I supposed to do with that?”

Alex shakes his head, each breath shorter than the one before it, forcing his shoulders wide and his spine straight as if by making himself bigger, he’ll find more room to take in air. “I wanted you to know,” he says. “That’s all. I wanted you to know because knowing something is better than not knowing something.” He parts his lips with his tongue, turning in place as Danny passes by him. “I didn’t fuck him.”

“No? What did you do? Might as well get it all out.”

“He used his mouth on me, until I climaxed.”

“And that’s it?”

“And we kissed, before. We touched. I didn’t have control of it, he did,” Alex says. “But it felt good, and you told me that I should, so it seemed like the right moment to try it. Danny,” he sighs, forcing his fingers to relax from how tight they’re clenched. “I love you. What I did with him has nothing to do with that.”

“Do you know what cheating means, Alex?” Danny asks him, turning to face his friend, his lover. “Cheating is going behind someone’s back, deceiving them. It can be as clear as fucking. As seemingly innocent as giving yourself emotionally to someone else, even when they physically don’t touch you. That as cheating, Alex. Fuck or no fuck, you cheated on me.”

Alex’s jaw hardens, and his eyes narrow. It’s an ugly word. A cruel word. In it lies the implication of deliberate harm. He never wanted to hurt Danny. He never does. And it’s as shocking as a summer thunderclap to see that he has, over something he did once at Danny’s behest and found lacking by compare.

“Why are you doing this?” Alex asks, letting his hands rise and fall to slap against his legs. “I didn’t deceive you!”

“But you’re telling me now, a year later, not at the time that you did,” Danny says. “You hid it from me.”

“It wasn’t relevant to anything about us.”

“I think it’s extremely relevant to everything about us,” Danny whispers, the words sending a rough shiver down into Alex’s bones.

“Then why did you tell me to do it?” Alex demands. “Why, if you were going to be upset by it, would you encourage me? I didn’t do it to hurt you, and if I thought it would, I’d not have done it, but you told me that I should, and now you’re angry that I did? You’ve no right to be angry!”

“I told you to sleep with other people,” Danny reminds him, stepping closer. “When you made it perfectly clear at the fire that for you there was no such thing as one person for you forever.”

“There isn’t -”

“And who was I to hold you back?” Danny spreads his arms, shrugs and raises his eyebrows. “Who was I to tell you no? That you’re an adult, and you made your choice. I merely confirmed that you were free to go.”

“But I didn’t.”

“No,” Danny agrees. “No, you told me that you wanted no one else. That you needed no one else. And I took you at your word.”

“My word is just as true now as it was then,” Alex insists. He lifts a hand and blinks as Danny swats it away before he can touch him. His lungs squeeze empty what little breath remained. “I didn’t want anyone else then. I don’t want anyone else now.”

“You wanted him to suck you off, though, didn’t you?”

Alex’s brow creases.

“You wanted his mouth on your cock. You needed it,” Danny says, voice lowering to a knife-edge whisper. “Was he cuter than me? Taller?” Every question brings Danny a fraction closer, every question tightens Alex’s hands to fists at his side. “You said he’s an artist, so he’s more talented than me. Was his cock bigger? Did you come in his mouth? Did he swallow it?”

“Danny, stop,” Alex manages, voice snaring short in anger.

“Don’t give me that look, Alex. Always so lost, always so bloody wounded. You’re not innocent. You knew exactly what you were doing.”

“It just happened.”

“And you said nothing for a fucking year. ”

“Had I known you’d react this way to something so inconsequential,” Alex suggests softly, “I wish I’d said nothing at all.”

Danny regards him a moment more, and when he steps closer the next time, it is to walk past Alex entirely. He pulls open their closet and seeks through it for a coat, a scarf, a pair of shoes. He doesn’t close the closet when he leaves it, clothes hanging off of him as he leans against the wall to shove his feet into his shoes.

He fumbles for his cigarettes, finding them and pushing one between his lips. His fingers tremble when he tries to work the lighter and he pulls back with a snarl when Alex looks to him as though to help.

“Don't wait up,” Danny tells him, and then he's out the door, a satisfying slam behind him, and Alex alone in the apartment.

It takes Danny several blocks and three cigarettes before he stops and leans against a wall to catch his breath. Alex's words keep pushing through the white noise in his skull and he doesn't know how to shut them up. Over and over comes the confession, over and over the sweet insistence that it meant nothing at all.

How could it mean nothing? How could it be nothing to him when he and Danny were still together? After the campfire, after the pleading words that Alex needed no other, Danny had kissed him in reassurance, told him he just needed to sleep on it and they parted ways. He wrote him the next day, he called, they made arrangements to have dinner at Alex's that weekend. Everything he had done after the campfire suggested they were together, suggested they were staying that way, and yet…

Pensively, Danny fiddles with another cigarette and takes his time pressing it between his lips. He takes his time making the lighter work. He takes pleasure in the first burning inhale.

Danny thinks of his own trysts, before Alex. He thinks of the parties and the clubbing, how he thought nothing of sinking to his knees in a public restroom to suck some guy off. He had done it so often that it almost became routine. Drugs, drink, cock. Sleep rinse repeat. How can he hold one slip against Alex when he himself has a list a mile long of strangers that have been at his body?

It strikes him that the insult comes from the fact that Alex knew they had not parted. Alex went into that willingly still knowing that Danny was his, and he Danny's. He had done it because in a moment of burning anger, Danny told him to.

Logic. He went with logic. He let it dictate his choices as he always does. And logically, his lover telling him to sleep with another was an instruction, not a dismissal.

How can someone who’s never been in a relationship, who’s never been in a spat, who’s never broken up with someone nor been broken up with, have anything to measure it by? Alex has never gone through the motions familiar to most. He doesn’t know the euphemisms. To his mind, ‘seeing other people’ sounds to him exactly as it’s said, and doesn’t exclude them seeing each other.

He hadn’t realized that Danny was trying to separate them. He never knew. And Danny no more could have imagined he’d hear it as anything else than Alex could have imagined Danny’s upset.

How were they ever meant to manage a relationship from worlds apart?

He pushes off the wall with heavy steps, making his way aimlessly towards the park. Alex already ran that morning. He won’t be there again. Danny finds a bench and settles, heavy, ignoring the muttering of a few older Croatian men a ways away.

No amount of grudging understanding eases the knife-twist of pain between his ribs when Alex’s words return to him. No amount of allowance for Alex’s deficiencies make the images of someone else between his legs any less agonizing. And the salt in his wounds of Alex declaring, prideful creature, that he might have never told him brings the cigarette to his lips again because without the confirmation of smoke Danny’s sure he’ll stop breathing entirely.

It is the first time that Danny truly aches for London. He wants to get smashed. He wants to get high. He wants to hurtle himself headlong into a writhing mass of bodies and dance and fuck and beg to be struck. He wants to push his body to the point that it breaks and then sleep for days until it mends itself again.

He wants to disappear like Alex did, and if he returns, shrug and widen his eyes and tell him that he never told Danny he couldn’t go back, he never told Danny he couldn’t fuck other people, so he has no right to be upset over something so inconsequential.

He wants Alex to hurt the way that he hurts.

Danny spreads his knees and rests his wrists against them, head ducked as far down as he can, so he can feel the blood flow to it. The anger will stay, he knows it will. The anger will stay until it has somewhere to go. He vaguely remembers Alex telling him something about that, relating to physics, relating to energy, how nothing comes from nothing and how energy cannot be destroyed or created, it can merely change form.

Fuck physics.

Fuck logic. Fuck Alex and his deliberate lack of wanting to understand.

Danny fingers slip through his hair and he sits that way for a while, just thinking. His eyes close and his breath evens and after a while he slowly sits up again. It will be dark soon, and it will get colder. A scarf and a light coat won’t do Danny much good out in the park, and he hasn’t his wallet to book a room. He supposes he could go barhopping, use the cash he has pushed into the pockets of his jeans until it runs out. He supposes he could just walk, walk and walk and walk until his legs give out or it’s morning again.

Or he could go home.

A fierce pride seizes him; he doesn’t want to return home. A return marks a defeat. A defeat allows Alex to think that what he did was fine, that he could do it again, that his understanding was not a misunderstanding and -

“Grow up,” Danny sighs to himself, fumbling in his pocket for another cigarette. “Just grow the fuck up.”

The pack’s empty. Danny watches the sky darken and the park empty and resigns himself to walking home.

The lights are on, casting a dim glow through the curtains they installed together. He can hear within the muted strains of Bach, which Danny knows because it’s the only music he’s ever heard Alex listen to of his own volition. Keyboard keys click in a steady, soft patter as he opens the door, their rhythm broken by a fractional pause.

And then it resumes again, as Alex continues filling his black screen with brightly-colored code.

Alex’s heart is pounding, but Danny can’t see that. His palms are damp, but Danny can’t see that either. He doesn’t want him to know his terror. He doesn’t want him to see him weak - not now, not like this. Alex continues scripting out the framework for a new idea just to give his hands something to do. A framework, only, because he can’t concentrate on the theory behind the program. A framework, only, because there’s an obvious metaphor in doing so and that gives Alex some ground, however unsteady, to stand on.

He’s all but motionless, riveted to his seat with a tension that aches down to his bones. Alex wants to go to Danny. He wants to touch him and be touched by him. He wants to spread their hands together and then touch their lips close and breathe the other in.

He wants to tell him that he missed him, and in their hours apart, that he tried to resign himself to the possibility that Danny left for good and wept at the thought. He wants to tell Danny that he’s being irrational, and that were he to attempt to listen with logic rather than emotion, he’d understand. He wants to say he’s sorry, he’s so sorry and that he never meant to hurt him, but pride and fear tug him in opposite directions and hold him taut.

He hears Danny pass behind him on socked feet, not stopping to run a hand through Alex’s hair as he normally would, not stopping to kiss him on the cheek or rest his chin against his shoulder and ask him how the algorithm is going. He does none of those things. He makes his way to the bathroom and closes the door with a quiet snap.

At least it isn’t a slam.

Alex stops typing as he listens to Danny move around the bathroom, breathing and turning on the tap and filling the empty space with his presence again. It is such a relief that when he leaves the bathroom again he doesn’t head towards the closet to pack. Alex hears the bedsprings squeak softly as Danny flops into bed and curls up on it. When he lifts his chin a little, he can see that Danny isn’t sleeping, or intent on it. He is merely resting, eyes on the ceiling and breathing even.

This isn’t a situation that can be peer-reviewed. There’s no advisor here to point out Alex’s errors and guide them to correction. Alex remains uncertain of the errors themselves, how many he’s made exactly, and at what points, but he knows that he has to correct them.

He knows he has to try.

Without turning towards Danny again, Alex rests his hands on the table and softly says, “He was taller than you, but he wasn’t better-looking. I found his art lacking, though I find most contemporary art to be. His single talent pales beside the quality and quantity of your own. His cock was the same size, roughly, as your own. I climaxed on my stomach, when the condom was removed.”

Alex waits. He looks. Danny shows no physical response to the words at all. He barely moves beyond how his stomach does when he breathes, and his eyes don’t leave the ceiling. He looks almost peaceful, if not for the tension that Alex can palpably feel between them in the room. Then Danny takes a breath, just a little deeper than the others, and licks his lips.

“I should have explained what I meant,” he murmurs, “when I said we should see other people. It was an implication, a… euphemism for us not seeing each other anymore. Not a suggestion for a supplement. And that’s on me. I have no right to be angry when that’s on me, you’re right.”

Alex feels the air pulled from his lungs as if in a vacuum. His eyes heat with the potential for tears and he looks away from Danny again to process, focused on a spot on the floor. It stands to reason that Danny would see Alex’s error. There is little - nothing - that escapes his notice, and beside him, Alex knows his own failings show in vast, stark contrast to the scant few flaws he sees in Danny’s character.

“You have every right to be angry,” Alex finally says. The chasm widening inside him, drawing in light and heat and air, threatens to snare his words too as he breathes, “I cheated on you.”

“You didn’t know you were. Or you didn’t think you were.”

“Does that matter?” Alex asks, shaking his head. “It doesn’t change the reality of it. A lie made in ignorance rather than in malice is still untrue.”

“Context,” Danny shrugs, pressing his fingers to his eyes. “Motivation.”

“You were trying to end our relationship?”

Danny is quiet for a moment. Alex can hear the swallow he passes through his throat before he eases his breathing again. With another squeak of bedsprings Danny stands from the bed once more. He shrugs his jacket off to toss to the bed before making his way closer to where Alex sits working.

“We speak different languages,” Danny says, sitting on the back of the couch, one foot pressed to the floor for balance, the other curled behind his knee. “We always have. I used to think it was something we wouldn’t overcome, that I was too stubborn or you too set in your ways but… we have a system now. We have a way to understand, now, that we didn’t have before. We didn’t have it then.”

He shifts a little and raises his eyes to Alex, giving him the chance to read his body language as he listens to his words, so he can see that there is no lie, so he can see that although there is a heaviness of upset there is no anger, not anymore.

“I felt, that night, as though you had undermined my entire belief in love. As though everything I thought precious and dear was nothing more to you than a number or an equation. I thought by telling you to go, to find someone else and prove your own theory, I would give you an out to do that. I would sever the thing before it hurt too much and it grew stronger.” Danny laughs then, that same strange sound that is nothing like the joy Alex knows so well. “I’m a bloody idiot,” he sighs.

Alex presses his fingers to his palms to stop himself from reaching for him. He’s afraid of what will happen if he does. His confusion, his anger now directed inwardly, his fear so intense he shivers from it as if chilled, tangle in his throat and manifest only as a small sound.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he finally manages, every word a Pyrrhic victory against his own rising impulse to simply shut down his whole verbal system and stop speaking altogether. Each word risks making this worse. Each word feels insufficient. “You’re not an idiot. You’re the smartest person I know. And you were kind to give me another chance. I’m sorry I didn’t use it better.”

“Alex…”

“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Alex says. “I’m sorry I cheated. Even then, I only wanted you.” He swallows back the heat blurring his vision, focused straight ahead. He’s trembling. “I’m sorry for making it harder to do now instead of then,” he says, the words hitching sharp and sighing short. “Thank you for trying. I didn’t deserve it.”

In a motion, Danny is at his side, knees to the polished wood and a hand on Alex’s thigh. In a motion, his brows are furrowed in concern not anger. He strokes a thumb against Alex’s leg and tries to parse through the misunderstanding here. He can feel Alex near-vibrating beneath his palm and sighs a soft curse, directed at the circumstances around them, not the man before him.

“Alex,” he tells him again. He hears the little sound he makes that in effect cuts off his words for a good long while, and watches him until Alex can lift his eyes to him again. Danny bites his lip and lets it go. “I’m not going,” he assures him. “I’m not going anywhere. I can get angry and yell and act like a fool and a right cunt but I am not leaving you. Ever.”

Danny’s hand is so warm that it seems scalding against Alex’s chilled skin. He draws a breath deep enough to finally fill him, and when he can’t bring himself to form words again, he hopes Danny can hear them anyway. If he needs to spend the rest of his life reassuring Danny that he’s never loved another like he loves Danny, he will. If he needs to tell him every day that he’s sorry, he will. Whatever Danny needs from him, Alex wants to give him.

There is relief in the muscles that soften beneath his eyes. There is apology in the furrow of his brow. On his parted lips, grief for having caused injury and regret for his decisions. And his eyes, wide and shining blue, hold such love for Danny that Danny can hardly look on something so sincere.

Slowly, gently, Alex rests his hand over Danny’s own, and gathers his slender fingers together. He turns his hand beneath, palm to palm, and spreads their fingers together. Perfectly matched. Entirely different.

Danny sighs and watches their hands touch. He says nothing for a long time. He settles on his hip instead and lets Alex touch him until his breathing eases down to a normal pace, until the sweat on his palm cools.

“We are the mind and the heart of a relationship,” Danny tells him, smiling a little. “You react with logic, that’s how you process. I react with emotion, it’s how I work. We’re still learning, it’s inevitable we would be.” Danny sits up again and shifts their hands just enough to rest his head against Alex’s thigh. He lets his eyes close when cool fingers slip through the strands and work the wind-tangles free.

“We should talk about it,” he adds, “so we can understand. So we know. I can put on tea. Will you come to bed?”

Alex nods, catching a stray curl beneath his thumb and sweeping it back from Danny’s brow to join the others.

“Can you talk?”

Danny knows that sometimes Alex gets overwhelmed, and when he does, certain parts of him shut down to reserve power. Alex explained it that way to him once, always describing himself in terms of machinery or engineering or mathematics, but in his own way shedding light on particular days - sometimes several a time - when Alex has remained entirely silent. His question isn’t an accusation. It isn’t judgmental. Alex offers a small smile, fleeting but sincere, and Danny lifts a hand to stroke his thumb across a dark circle beneath Alex’s eye.

“Let’s try in the morning,” Danny says. He gives Alex’s cheek a gentle squeeze and drags himself up to stand, though hardly manages it before Alex follows, surrounding Danny in his arms, looped tight over his shoulders. They stand together that way for a few moments, holding each other, swaying from the strain of their emotional exertion.

When they finally separate, it’s not very far apart. Alex takes up Danny’s cigarettes, a fresh pack stored on a shelf, and offers it to Danny. He lifts a brow, unable to fight down a smile.

“You know me so well,” Danny murmurs. “I’ll just step out -”

Alex shakes his head again, and stepping close, presses his lips to Danny’s brow, holding them there.

“You don’t like smoke inside,” Danny reminds him. Alex simply shrugs, and manages another little smile of his own. Right now, Alex finds that he doesn’t mind much of anything at all.

Danny turns away to light a cigarette, and takes every care to blow the smoke away from Alex as they both make their way to the kitchen. The anger that had exploded in him before has eased to an ember. There is a hurt there still that tugs at his heart and the baser aspects of his mind, but it is no longer blinding, no longer so hot it burns him and so harsh it makes his eyes water.

Danny sets the kettle to boil and brings down two mugs. He tosses teabags into both of them, gets milk from the fridge for Alex’s, sugar for himself. It’s meditative and comforting, doing something so familiar and so domestic. The tobacco helps too. Alex’s presence behind him, close but never overbearing, is like a blanket. He doesn’t talk while he works, comfortably quiet with Alex just the same. He pours them both tea and hands Alex’s to him behind himself, putting his cigarette out under the running tap before disposing of it in the bin beneath it.

Alex’s eyes are still so wide, as he cradles his mug with both hands and watches Danny over the top of it. There is a wariness there, as if to look away from him or leave his side will result in Danny being gone. He needs to see him. He needs to feel him close.

Danny lifts a hand, warm from his tea, and sets it to Alex’s cheek. He strokes softly with his thumb, but the contact is enough to ease both a little more. Alex sighs and tilts his head, rubbing his cheek against Danny’s palm, and when Danny makes his way backwards to the bed, Alex lets himself be lead.

Were Alex to have the capacity to speak right now, it would be a torrent. I love you, I love you, I need you, I’m sorry again and again and again until his voice gave out once more. I love you, I love you, I need you, I’m sorry until his throat rubbed raw from pouring his heart out past his lips.

He knows they’re not past this yet. He knows they’ll have to speak about it, and that it will be difficult for them both. Despite his uncertainty, his shame and his regret, Alex is not afraid.

He loves him. He loves him. He needs him and he’s so sorry.

“I’ll take a shower in the morning, I think,” Danny mumbles, setting his mug to his side table before stepping out of his trousers and tossing those to the chair. “Can’t be bloody arsed right now.”

He talks for no other reason than because he has to. He enjoys the sound of being able to talk to himself and reassure himself, he has since he was a child. It’s mindless and meaningless, but Alex has heard him go through this before, where he has talked with no intention of being heard, no intention of making sense. It’s a grounding thing, like tapping his fingers together in a rhythm.

“It’s gonna be cold tonight,” Danny continues, as Alex undresses down to his pants and pulls on a clean undershirt. “Should’ve heard the old guys in the park go on about the weather, you’d think they have nothing else to say.” He climbs into bed and waits for Alex to do the same, instinctively curling up against him when he does. “God, I’m so fucking tired.”

Alex eases an arm beneath him, the other over the top. Danny rests his head against his chest and stretches long before easing heavy once more. Alex hides a small smile against Danny’s hair, thinking of him in the park, noting with pleasure that his Croatian is coming along enough to pick up others’ conversations.

He thinks of why Danny was there in the park, and his arms tighten a bit more.

Little movements shift their bodies, settling together, inching closer, adjusting their legs and matching their breath to the other. Alex rubs a thumb against Danny’s shoulder. His other hand curls and splays, curls and splays against the small of his back. Danny rests a hand on Alex’s chest, over his heart, and Alex lets his eyes close.

There is so much to be said, so many questions in need of answers in need of explanation. There is so much to be said and so little energy between them to do anything more than seek out the other in the most primal way they can grasp them. Body heat and heart beats, breath and pulse. Alex noses through Danny’s curls and kisses the top of his head.

“Do you think you can take a day off tomorrow?” Danny asks. “Rest day from running. Away from the computer.”

Alex nods. He can. He will.

Anything for Danny. Everything for Danny.

They’ve established their arguments. They’ve built their framework. Now they need only to populate the parameters.

“I’ll need a day out of my head too,” Danny adds after a while. “A day just spent like this would be nice. We can talk if you feel like talking, or we can sort it out another way, I don’t care. I think we both need a break, though, away from our usual cycles of behavior.”

He draws patterns on Alex’s chest, just little things, over and over. Sometimes a word, other times an image. Danny can’t draw, not beautifully, not in a way that is considered genuinely artistic, but he can make himself understood through color and movement. At least, he hopes. He can feel Alex’s heart calm beneath the little motions and it makes him smile.

“I love you,” he tells him.

The breath that Alex takes seems to lift him from the bed, chest rising suddenly beneath Danny’s cheek. His heart quickens again, just a spike before beginning to settle, and Danny smiles against his chest. Alex speaks to him without speaking, he makes clear what he cannot say in a secret language too deeply protected for others to decipher. Danny understands it as if the words were flashing neon bright before him.

He hears.

He knows.

And his heart answers when in a whisper, Alex tells him he loves him too.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _He will never understand the need to assign numerical values to things one cannot quantify. He has never understood Alex's obsession with graphing and putting into an equation something unpredictable. And yet he can see, every day, that to Alex mathematics and science are as beautiful as a sunset is to Danny._
> 
> _He is extraordinary for it._
> 
> _Through him, Danny is allowed to glimpse a world he cannot understand nor begin to imagine._

Alex wakes first, but doesn’t stir, his internal clock set by a lifetime lived in the same routines. He would move slowly, on a normal day, untwine himself from the tangle of limbs and sheets that Danny wraps around him, and stretch as he dressed to run. A kiss to Danny’s hair to hear the fussy sound he makes before burying himself in blankets again, and a promise to be back soon.

He would run, and return, and wake Danny again with another kiss.

But he’s not going running today. He’s not going to resolve any formulaic discrepancies or write new code. He lays just where he is, and instead marvels at how Danny’s arm looks slung against his chest. Danny’s breath comes in sleepy little puffs against the back of his neck. Their knees nest together, Alex’s bottom cradled by Danny’s lap. He can’t see his face, but he can close his eyes and imagine the unruly mop of curls draped over his face.

How close they came to losing this, because of Alex’s stupidity, terrifies him.

He grasps Danny’s hand and brings it gently to his lips. Each fingertip passes over his lips, parted to sigh against his hand. He places it back against his chest and holds it there, smiling suddenly when Danny pulls him closer back against him.

Danny mumbles something in his sleep and then his breathing returns to the slow rise and fall behind Alex again. It is terribly sweet to Alex how badly Danny does mornings. He is entirely daft, in the loveliest way, until he has properly woken up. He mumbles, he laughs, he squirms against Alex and he refuses to discuss anything that remotely requires him to think. He sighs something, now, about it snowing maybe, and nuzzles hard between Alex’s shoulder blades.

He doesn’t let Alex go.

Alex finds he doesn’t want to be let go, and settles into their shared warmth without protest.

When next Alex squirms gently free, Danny lets him go without even waking up. Alex makes his way to the bathroom and returns to find Danny sleepily rubbing his wrist against his eyes to work the sleep from them. With a wide yawn he welcomes Alex back to bed and smiles when he ducks his head beneath Danny’s chin.

“I like when you make yourself small like that,” Danny tells him warmly. “You’re always so tall when we stand.”

“Twelve centimeters, give or take,” Alex says, his smile spreading when Danny laughs, squeezing him a little closer. “I like feeling small against you. I feel safe. It’s as if nothing in the world can reach us.”

He ducks his head a little, nose against Danny’s throat, lips parted to feel his own breath pool warmth from his friend’s skin.

“I like when you feel small against me, too,” Alex adds after a moment, his voice a comfortable murmur. “Then it’s as if I could protect you, instead.”

“You do,” is all Danny tells him. And it’s true. Never once has Danny felt patronized in Alex’s arms, never once has he been made to feel as though this is a favor to him instead of genuine want for closeness. He loves that. As though to show Alex, as well as have him hear it, Danny gently works free of their position and curls against Alex instead, laughing when Alex does, as they settle into this new position.

For a few long blissful moments, neither speak, both comfortable to hold and be held, eyes closed and bodies dozing. Beyond the window, the wind picks up, and although the clouds threaten it, no rain falls upon their little house just yet.

“I believe you,” Danny says after a while. “Every time you say you love me. You’ve never lied to me, I know it’s true.”

Alex draws a deep breath, and turning his head to rest his cheek against Danny’s hair, sighs out slowly again. He keeps him folded close in his arms, a leg wrapped over both of his. Danny’s fingers curl against the soft undershirt Alex wears and Alex lets his eyes close again.

“I once attempted, early in the refinement of our algorithm, to calculate something I thought would be easier to formulate. I thought from there I could grow the idea through perturbation, assigning numerical value to non-numerical concepts and so forth,” he says. “I tried to calculate how much you mean to me - literally, how much, in comparison to other elements in my life. I wanted to know at what point the scale would balance, and when it would tilt.”

Danny keeps quiet quiet his immediate insult, though it catches in his throat. He swallows back the impulsive response that it’s a grotesque idea and forces his breath to ease. He listens.

“It didn’t work,” Alex admits, his smile a little rueful. “I could find nothing in my life - no combination of people, objects, experiences, even theoretically - to which I could assign a value that would outweigh yours.”

Danny presses a kiss to his throat in thanks. He will never understand the need to assign numerical values to things one cannot quantify. He has never understood Alex's obsession with graphing and putting into an equation something unpredictable. And yet he can see, every day, that to Alex mathematics and science are as beautiful as a sunset is to Danny.

He is extraordinary for it.

Through him, Danny is allowed to glimpse a world he cannot understand nor begin to imagine.

“Do you want to know something I’ve never tried to put into words before?” Danny asks, his voice quiet and pressed warm to Alex's skin. He pulls back enough to see him, to let Alex see his smile. “You told me once that you couldn't understand why someone would stay, when you had no experience in relationships, when you felt weird compared to others around you.”

“Yes,” Alex replies, blinking slowly as he takes Danny in.

“I was just as scared,” Danny admits. “Just as lost, in wondering why someone as extraordinary as you would even consider a hopeless romantic like me. With my archaic beliefs and hopeless notions. That's why I was so scared, so bloody scared, when you told me you slept with someone else. Because he would not hold you to such silly things. He would not trap you as I have.”

Alex’s brow knits and he nuzzles close, breathing in along Danny’s hair line, closing his eyes when wild curls tickle across his nose and cheeks. He fills himself with the scent of cigarettes and clean sweat. He fills his lungs, his heart, his body with Danny.

“You haven’t trapped me,” he says, words muffled and softly spoken against Danny’s brow. “Not once have I felt that way. Never.”

“You don’t feel as if you’re missing out on something better? He might have been -”

“He wasn’t,” Alex says. “And I don’t want anything more than you. I don’t want anything different. The chances of finding ‘better’ are astronomical. I can’t begin to imagine what ‘better’ would even mean.”

“Someone who understands the way you think,” Danny suggests. “Someone who relates to that.”

“You understand me. You hear me in ways I can’t hear myself. You interpret iterations of what I say in ways I could never imagine.” Danny makes a small sound as Alex ducks his head to nuzzle alongside Danny’s nose, kissing him, then kissing him again. “I don’t want someone like me. I know myself already. I don’t particularly like myself. I don’t want reflection, Danny, I want refraction. And you’re enough,” Alex says. “You’re more than enough.”

Danny takes comfort in that truth. He may not feel enough, he may feel far from adequate, but he does not have to be, for himself. He has to be for Alex. And Alex has every right, as any man, to make a decision for what is good for him.

He has chosen Danny. Even after his experience with another mouth and other hands, another body pressed close, still he chose Danny. 

There is an incredible warmth in that, and a beautiful pride.

Danny swallows and smiles a little more, watching Alex so near. Already, Alex has forgiven Danny his outlandish reaction. Already Alex has welcomed him back to their intimate warmth and softness together, without repercussion or anger. It is more than Danny feels he deserves, but for himself he has forgiven Alex his tryst, he has forgiven an omission.

“I’m glad I am your refraction,” Danny says, laughter pushing past his words as he realizes the absurdity of his own statement, but he doesn’t take it back. 

Alex smiles, watching him laugh. His joy shows so readily, as does his desire, his anger. Alex envies him that ability, to experience and express so openly. He finds his breath shortened by it, his heart rate higher, to experience such tidal swells of emotion even by proximity.

He stretches away from Danny, taking up the glass of water left beside the bed from the morning before. Danny splays a hand on his chest as Alex leans and lifts the glass beside their window. “Like this,” Alex says, adjusting the tilt of his wrist a little one way, a little the other. Finally he stops, smiling wide. “There,” Alex says, nodding toward the wall.

A prism of color, pale in such little light, paints a faint rainbow across the bare white wall in front of them. “That’s how you look to me,” Alex says. “That’s how being near you feels. But so much brighter, Danny. Blinding, sometimes. I’m just light. I’m there or I’m not. The sun is above the horizon or it’s night. But you,” he says, a laugh catching his words and softening them to a sigh. “You’re so much more.”

Danny watches him, watches his joy and relief and feels it in himself. After a moment he reaches and folds his fingers over the glass, making the rainbow disappear.

“And without you, that's me,” he says. “Dulled, blending into the monochrome crowd.” He lets the glass go again and smiles as Alex does when the rainbow appears once more.

“And it’s the same radiation, isn’t it, the same beam of sun,” Alex says. “It appears to be different, to our eyes, but it isn’t two separate forces. It’s energy, the same energy, on either side.” He lifts his eyes to the window to watch the snow start to fall, and lowers the glass to take a sip. It clicks back to the table, beside their unfinished tea from the night before, and he sinks back down to lay facing Danny.

Danny rests his hand against Alex’s cheek. Their brows press together, noses beside the other, lips meeting last. A smile separates them, but only so much that their lips still brush as they speak.

“I love you,” Alex says. “I’m sorry.”

Danny gently shakes his head, their noses brushing together with the motion, and and he breathes the words in. He loves him too. He's sorry, too, for being such a stupid man. He hums, low and warm, and kisses Alex again, a lingering thing that says so much without saying anything at all.

“I’m sorry,” he says, smiling against Alex’s soft kiss of acceptance. “I’m sorry I will always be so possessive of you. I love you, too.”

“Don’t be sorry for that,” Alex tells him, lips parting in a smile as Danny laughs against him. “I like that you are. I’m very grateful you want to put up with me.”

“It’s hardly a burden,” murmurs Danny, grinning.

“I don’t believe you. I know I’m difficult.”

“You’re tricky,” Danny allows, and their laugh closes into a kiss. “It’s alright. I enjoy puzzles.”

Alex’s tongue touches his bottom lip, tasting Danny on it. They twine closer, again, limbs enmeshed and mouths parted against the other’s cheek. Alex holds him tight.

“I’m not sorry that I didn’t let you break up with me,” he murmurs, amused.

Danny laughs. Suddenly everything is so funny, nothing weighs on him and his laugh grows in volume. He was an idiot, Alex didn't leave him for it. He was irrational, Alex didn't leave him for it. He was the worst kind of romantic, the most terribly jealous boyfriend, and his most rational, incredible partner did not leave him for it.

Danny presses a hand to his face and laughs into that, turning to curl against Alex as he watches, takes this strange behavior in and adores him for it.

“How...” Danny giggles. “How am I so lucky?”

Alex watches him with nothing less than wonder, an absolute affection that defies even his hard-honed sense of reason. He decides against reminding Danny that it’s Alex who’s lucky, considering - as Alex now knows - he cheated on him. It doesn’t seem to matter so much when they’re pressed close together and happy again, each grateful for the other’s forgiveness. Nothing unpleasant seems to matter at all when Danny laughs so freely.

Maybe Danny should have left before Alex could hurt him. Maybe Danny should have left after Alex did hurt him. Maybe his instincts were right to guide him away from someone like Alex, who wasn’t made for love like this.

But he didn’t leave.

He stayed.

And somehow, through all of that, Danny is the one who thinks himself lucky.

“We’re both lucky,” Alex says, gently peeling Danny’s fingers from his face to see his pleasure made bright. He kisses his fingertips, his palm. He holds Danny’s hand against his own cheek instead. “You did return my water bottle to me, though. Perhaps that’s where it began,” he says with a sleepy smile. “It’s only fair I repay the favor.”

“For the bottle?” Danny laughs, snorting. “Alex…”

“And staying. Your patience. Your kindness, for as little as I’ve earned it,” he says, tucking a kiss against Danny’s palm, eyes bright as he watches him from their corners. “Tell me how I can make it up to you. Tell me how I can be better.”

“Don't change,” Danny tells him. “Never, ever change.”

They stay in bed for a long while more, perhaps an hour, maybe longer, doing nothing more than touching and kissing and laying together. Alex won't work today, and Danny won't walk aimlessly in the snow. They needn't. They have a day to share together, uninterrupted.

“Let's,” Danny suggests, stretching his arms over his head, “find a film, make popcorn, close the curtains and go on a date.”

“Alright,” Alex smiles, turning to his stomach to rest his head on Danny’s chest. He listens to the rhythm of his heart, and after a moment more, shakes his head. “We don’t have popcorn.”

“Then we’ll have to go get some. What’s the word for popcorn?”

Alex furrows his brow in thought. It eases when Danny sets fingers to his hair, nails scraping across his scalp and spilling shivers down his skin. A minute passes as Alex seeks through the library of his thoughts, and when he emerges again from those seemingly endless depths, he grins. “Kokice.”

“How in the hell do you know that?” Danny laughs, dropping his arm across his eyes.

With another quick sift through the catalogue of his thoughts, Alex shrugs. “It must have been on a vocabulary list. I remember a lot of words tied to activities, like going to the theatre…”

“What’s the word for that?”

“Kino.”

“And movie?”

“Film,” Alex says, and Danny snorts, giggling against his wrist.

“That one doesn’t count,” he decides, as he sets his thumb against the corners of his eyes to soak away the tears of delight. “You don’t get points for that.”

“Are you keeping score?”

“Absolutely not. Go shower,” he says, smiling as he buries a kiss against Alex’s hair. “I’ll go smoke and come in after. We’ll find coffee - kava -”

“Excellent pronunciation,” murmurs Alex.

Danny grins. “And popcorn. And then we won’t leave the flat at all, for anything.”

Alex can’t think of anything he wants more.

The march through the cold, following the shower and cigarette, is filled with sly little smiles and deliberate kicks against the fluffy fresh snow. They stop at the corner store, no need to go further. Together they gather coffee to last them the day, two bags of microwavable popcorn, a few other snacks stealthily smuggled to the counter, and another packet of cigarettes for Danny.

On the way back, Danny slips his arm through Alex's and shoves his hand back into his pocket, tethering himself close. Alex watches him a moment, smiling as their steps match to keep their pace comfortable, before deliberately breaking pace and pressing a hand to Danny's chest when he stumbles.

“You’re terrible,” Danny remarks, to a lightly lifted eyebrow from his friend. “You are.”

“And what will you do?” Alex asks him, returning to keeping their steps even, left for right. Danny considers long enough for Alex to shuffle another missteps into their walk before laughing and slipping his arm free.

“Race you,” he grins, and takes off in a flurry of snow.

Alex’s lips slacken in surprise, then he smiles, watching Danny stumble and curse as he does. Their bag of groceries around his arm, Alex keeps his strides slow and steady and marks off ten, before digging his heel into the snow and giving chase. The wind whips icy against his face, flakes melting fast against his cheeks. His lungs spill grey breath into the air, and his muscles fire like pistons. Beneath his feet the snow crunches dense, and when Danny looks back and laughs loudly, he nearly trips again in his delighted alarm.

Danny’s scarf flaps behind him as he swerves, hand caught against a tree to turn onto their street. Alex ducks his head and tosses his hair back from his face, laughing when Danny turns for a few steps to run backward and watch him. They chase until they reach the patch of grass at the steps of their flat, and just as Danny grasps the railing to hurtle himself upward, he’s pulled back with such force that the ground falls away beneath his feet.

He collides hard with Alex, and in the moment they’re airborne, Alex catches Danny in his arms. The ground returns all too quickly, and Alex grunts as he falls against it, head tilted up, body relaxed. Snow puffs up around them, sparkling and soft. Danny blinks down at the man who caught him, who held him, the man who broke his fall. He swipes his mittened hand across Alex’s face to wipe off the snow and grinning wide, kisses away the cold from his lips.

“You’ll get wet,” Danny tells him, making no move whatsoever to get off Alex as he says this. “The snow will melt through your coat and seep through to your skin and make you cold.”

“It will,” Alex agrees, drawing his hands up and down Danny’s back. “Soon.”

“You should move.”

“I should move,” Alex sighs, dropping his hands to the snow beneath, gently shifting them there to gather little mounds beside his hips. “I should. And take you with me, inside where it’s warm.” He waits a moment, leans up to kiss against Danny’s lips that spread in a smile, and then without warning he gathers a handful of snow and shoves it down the back of Danny’s coat.

With a shriek, Danny is off him, wriggling to try and shake the snow from himself before it melts, laughing like a child when a chill runs through him.

“Horrible,” he tells Alex, pointing an accusing mittened finger. “You are utterly horrible.”

Alex merely shrugs at the accusation, brows up and eyes directed to the sky as though he has not a thing in the world to be guilty about. A snowball finds its way square against his lips and he sputters just in time to duck another. The next catches him in the back as he rolls upright, a movement smooth and practiced. He lifts his coat to block the next that falls apart just before his face, spattering snow against him as Danny falls back, staggering to gather another, laughing loud.

Alex abandons their bag for the moment, packing snow tight between his palms as he ducks one of Danny’s snowballs that sails by overhead. He wings it hard, a fluid twist from the hips, and it bursts with a satisfying smack against Danny’s belly.

“I’m wounded!” Danny cries out, clutching his middle. Alex grins, shaking the snow from his hair as he stands and watches Danny drop dramatically to his knees. He offers out his hand, and stepping forward, Alex takes it, bringing him to his feet again.

“Stiff upper lip, soldier,” Alex murmurs, affecting a particularly somber expression. “I’m not letting you go on my watch.”

“No, sir,” Danny replies, pushing up on his toes to kiss Alex deeply, eyes closed and breath warm against his cheeks. Danny knows his own are bright with cold and pleasure both, but Alex doesn’t show it as brightly. He is a lovely pink, a gentle dusky thing. Danny presses his mittens to Alex’s cheeks and holds him close, humming and biting his lip when he pulls away.

“Shall we go upstairs, then, commander?”

“Lieutenant.”

“Lieutenant,” Danny repeats, amused. “Or did you have other orders for me?”

“I’m sure I could think of some,” Alex says. “Though they’d hardly be above-board. Very hush-hush, you know.”

“I’m anything but, I’m afraid.”

“Good,” grins Alex. “I like it when you’re loud.”

Danny pushes up higher still, calves straining, arms wrapped tight over Alex’s shoulders. He rubs their noses together, laughing as he’s lifted damn near effortlessly from his feet. Alex’s muscles harden, his effort shows in only fine lines alongside his eyes, but he holds Danny with one arm tucked beneath his bottom and carefully - very carefully - takes the few steps back to gather their things.

“Very impressive, lieutenant.”

“Hardly so. We used to run with twice your weight on our backs.”

“Christ, why?”

“In case we needed to carry someone,” Alex considers. “Endurance conditioning. A sadistic streak in our superior officers.”

“I am so glad that when I was invited to the army I declined.”

“One doesn’t get invited to the army,” Alex tells him, amused. “And one certainly cannot decline were they to be.”

“I’m a special case,” Danny tells him, nodding sagely. “A hacker of the highest calibre, who never needs to see the field.”

“Oh?”

“One who can do more damage before breakfast with a cup of earl grey, than any man in the field,” Danny tells him proudly, ducking his head as Alex takes him inside.

“Well,” Alex says, “then I’m even more relieved I was able to carry you to safety. It would be an enormous loss for England if we’d lost you beneath a snow drift.”

Danny snorts, giggling against Alex’s shoulder. “And to friendly fire, no less.” Alex sets their bag down but keeps Danny on his hip, locking the door behind them. “Whatever will the Queen say?”

“I’m certain I’ll be court-martialed imminently,” Alex says, a twist of his torso bringing Danny in front of him, skinny legs snared around his hips. “Demotion, dismissal with disgrace, imprisonment. They’ll throw the book at me for risking someone of such enormous value. The papers will have a field day with our illicit affair.”

“How ghastly,” Danny agrees, peeling off his mittens to set bare hands against Alex’s cold cheeks to warm them. “‘Agent and handler caught catching up on old episodes of Downton Abbey’,” he says, keeping a straight face as he watches Alex smile at him, his eyes bright with his delight.

“If we can’t even stay up to date with our own programming, what will they say about our loyalty to Queen and country?”

“I shudder to think,” Danny nods. “Now - kitchen, please, lieutenant. I have tea to make and popcorn to pop.”

“Are you sound enough to walk?”

“Absolutely not.”

Alex hums, leaning in to press the sound to Danny’s lips. He takes up the bag again and carries Danny towards their kitchen, shivering when cool fingers slip beneath the collar of his coat and shirt alike, pressing to his back. Danny’s legs tighten and Alex sighs, turning him towards the counter to rest his bottom against the edge.

“I’m entirely in your service,” he murmurs, his smile lifting the corners of his eyes. “Special Agent Holt.”

“I like the sound of that,” Danny decides, preening with the new title bestowed on him. He wiggles back on the counter to sit comfortably but doesn’t let go of Alex where he stands. It strikes him again that their silly fight - his stupid overreaction - could have cost him this. This smile and this power and this love that stands so willingly before him. 

“I’m lethal with a wooden spoon,” he adds, to Alex’s delight. “Or a whisk. I make a mean Hollandaise.”

“A vital skill, to be sure,” Alex answers, pleasure warming his cheeks now rather than the cold. “I’ve not had eggs benedict since we left London.”

“I can poach eggs.”

“You’re incredible.”

“Not for that alone, I hope,” Danny grins, sliding Alex’s dampened coat back from his shoulders. “And I didn’t say I’d make them for you.”

“Incredibly cruel is what I should have said instead then,” Alex teases. “I should expect no less from my handler, I suppose. An iron fist in a velvet glove.” He leans in close as his coat slides to the floor, removing his gloves as they kiss and tossing them to the floor with a wet slap. Cool hands skim Danny’s cheeks and gather in his hair, their lips parting on soft sighs and closing with needy clicks.

“Let’s see how you manage the mission of popcorn first,” Danny tells him, kissing Alex again when warm lips meet his own once more. “None burnt. None wasted. All warm and buttery in a bowl by the time I set down our tea on the coffee table.”

“I’m sure I can, admirably.”

“I believe you can, lieutenant,” Danny murmurs to him. “I have every faith.” With another kiss, Danny pushes Alex away and holds him at arm’s length. “Alright, agent. This is covert and highly important. I expect extraordinary results. Queen and country and the reruns of Downton Abbey rely on you. Go, my son, with my blessing.”

“Are you a priest, too?”

“I am manifold,” Danny declares, and Alex grins so wide his cheeks ache from it. He brings Danny’s hand to his lips and holds a kiss against his fingers, stepping back once, then again. A quick click snaps his heels together and lifts his hand to his brow in a salute. “Sir, yes sir.”

Danny mutes a small, helpless sound behind a bitten lip. “God, that’s hot,” he sighs. “Don’t tell me you’ve got a uniform, too.”

“I wouldn’t be a very good soldier if I didn’t,” he answers, fighting down a smile. “Sir.”

With another little groan from Danny, Alex turns to begin his assignment. They brush together in the kitchen, touches and kisses shared in passing. Alex watches the microwave with careful attention as it spins their popcorn to bursting, re-reading the instructions now and then, and stopping it when his count between pops reaches a particular point. The duds are picked out carefully as he pours it to a bowl, a dish of butter warming in the microwave while he works.

Danny makes tea, setting their newly-bought coffee to the pantry for later use. Milk for Alex, sugar for himself. He watches the steam rise from them in front of the window before taking both up to set to the coffee table before the couch.

It is so rare that they get to watch television together. Hardly because neither allow it, but because both find something else to do. They share time in other ways, they are always in each other’s presence but this… this is almost sweetly novel for them both.

Danny settles to the couch to wait and thinks dreamily of Alex in uniform. He thinks of the way he would stand, straight-backed and beautiful, chin up and eyes focused and voice steady as he listened to orders and conveyed them on. He thinks of how commanding he would look, how decorated as a lieutenant - a young lieutenant - among the older and more experienced men. He thinks...

“Popcorn, sir,” Alex tells him, setting a large bowl down before Danny and smiling at him as he’s bent. Danny grins back.

“Much obliged, lieutenant.”

“Permission to move freely?”

“Granted,” Danny grins, accepting the kiss he’s given and sipping his tea as Alex steps away again. He turns on the television as he passes by toward the closet. Two neatly folded blankets are brought down for them, and the blinds tilted closed to darken the room. Danny lets a piece of buttery popcorn melt against his tongue and lifts his mug when Alex spreads a blanket across his legs.

He settles beside him, close. Their sides pressed together, Alex smooths his own blanket flat before handing Danny the remote. With an arm over Danny’s shoulder, and his tea in the other hand, he touches another kiss to his temple.

An entire day spent just so, to relax and reconnect. An entire day to remind themselves why it’s worth pushing through the variable distances between them. An entire day to kiss, and touch, and let the other know how deeply they are loved.

“I’m so glad that you’re here,” Alex tells him, and while it feels like hardly enough, those simple words say it all.


End file.
